Chapter 29 #2
“Let the record reflect, your honor, that that terrible joke was intentionally offered up to get a smile out of you. A sacrifice pop fly to advance my base runner to second.”
“Well, you play ball like the Mets.”
“You shut your pretty mouth,” he says. His lips curve, the dimples popping in and out of view with the passing streetlights.
“So you’ve heard tons about me. About my family,” I say. “Distract me. Tell me about yours.” I need the distraction. Not only from this clawing worry… I need to break this spell he’s cast over me. I don’t trust it.
“My family. Okay. Well, you met Anna—and heard her whole opinion of me.” He grimaces.
“My parents are like a Norman Rockwell painting. High school sweethearts. Went to college together. Married right out of school and settled into suburban bliss. Had kids. Boy and a girl. Got a dog—a few over the years. And my parents are still totally in love with each other, kind of like Avery’s.
Never heard them raise their voices to one another. Or to us, for that matter.”
A pang of envy strikes. “Sounds pretty perfect.”
“Perfect.” Jack’s mouth twists into a self-deprecating angle. “Yeah, that comes with its own stresses, you know.”
“Living up to it?”
“Anna… I don’t know if she even tried. I guess she did, for a while, but…
There was an accident, and it messed her up for a bit.
It seemed like she was feeling better about things, but then…
I don’t know what happened with her. After a while, if she thought it would piss off me and my parents, she’d do it.
“I did the opposite. Dad got sick? Instead of chasing girls, I got a job to help with the bills. I had to drop Anna off at her dance class every week. I cleaned the house after school. Eventually, if you do a thing for someone long enough, they come to expect it of you. Did my best to live up to everyone’s expectations, but man, those things were sky-high. A prison of expectations, I guess.”
“Mr. White Knight,” I murmur. “Driving damsels in distress to the Jersey Shore.”
He opens his mouth, then hesitates.
“What?”
He shifts gears and then glances at me. “With you, I’ve always been able to be a little bit of the bad guy, too. Which is…liberating, I guess.”
I crack out a laugh. “I knew it! You enjoyed being an asshole!”
“You enjoyed it, too.”
“I admit nothing.” My admission is evident in my voice. “I was always justified in my actions.”
“Justified, huh? So what was that brown stuff on my mailbox?”
I shift. “Chocolate.”
“Thank God. And the erectile-dysfunction mailing list you put me on? Justified?”
“I mean, I don’t know for sure, but probably.”
“Well, I didn’t find it funny. My granddad died of ED.”
“Oh no, I—” It takes me a beat to realize that what he’s said makes no sense. I notice his grin, and I smack his shoulder.
He shifts away, laughing, and then his voice becomes a low growl, the bass of which I feel everywhere. “Always wanted to try one of those pills. For recreational purposes, of course.”
We drive along, the banter helping the highway mile markers melt away.
But stress has a muscle memory, and I find my teeth clenching harder, my shoulders growing just a little more taut, when we get about twenty minutes out.
I call the hospital, but they have no record of Mom being admitted.
That’s promising, right? Unless she had to be airlifted to Camden?
I look up the number and quickly dial. No record.
We exit off the highway, and Jack looks around as we pass the quiet marina and then head over the shadowed drawbridge into Stone Harbor proper. Without any leads to go on, I give him directions to my mother’s place, and the silence stretches as my fears and worries eat up the scenery in my mind.
We pull into her driveway of white crushed shells, the tires making crunching sounds that feel especially loud, given it’s just after midnight. The house is dark.
We get out of the car. The scent of the ocean hangs heavy in the air, the way it always does. There’s a cold bite to the nighttime breeze. Her house, her block even, feels especially desolate.
I run up the steps and ring the bell, hearing its chime echo through the house. That gets no response, so I start pounding on the locked storm door and peering through windows.
Jack shuffles up the steps behind me.
I pull my phone out and call Monica. The call goes straight to voicemail. I try calling my mother’s number again, and the upstairs lights go on in the house. They’re followed by hallway lights on the first floor. The curtains part.
Mom.
I see her startled face in the window. A mix of relief and an awful, creeping suspicion washes over me.
She unlocks and opens the door, then she’s standing in front of me in her nightgown.
“Penny?” she says. “What are you—”
“Monica sent me a text saying you were on your way to the hospital.” My voice claps like thunder in the inky, dark quiet of the street.
My mom must think the same because she pokes her head outside, noticing Jack for the first time and pausing momentarily before ushering us in.
She settles us in the Christmas-colored living room.
Jack folds his tall frame onto a green-and-red-plaid armchair.
I sit near him, on the hunter-green slipcovered love seat, as my mom bustles out of the room before I can interrogate her.
“Are you okay?” Jack asks.
I bite at my lip and turn my eyes upward, staring at Mom’s ceiling fan. I shake my head. “I don’t know what’s worse: being maybe-manipulated into coming down here, or the prospect of her really being sick. I know it’s the latter, but…”
“Maybe she isn’t well.”
“We’ll see,” I say flatly.
My mom comes back with tea and a plate of Stella D’oro Swiss fudge cookies. She fusses with our napkins and cups until I can’t take it anymore.
“Mom. Why did Monica text me?”
“Honey, maybe we can talk about this when the company isn’t in the room.” She looks at Jack pointedly.
“Jack isn’t company.”
She sits upright. “Jack? As in the Jack Craig from the articles about you?” She says it with a horror in her voice, like I’ve invited Stalin over for biscuits.
“That’s me, ma’am. Fighter of TV stars. Wrecker of homes,” Jack says. He isn’t disrespectful in his delivery, but there’s almost a relish in the way he’s painting himself the villain. He’s enjoying being the bad guy of the story here, too. Or maybe it’s for my amusement.
I shake my head. “Yes, that’s the same Jack, and no, he isn’t what the stories made him out to be. Lucas fell through a hole in my— Never mind.”
“Are you…together?” my mom asks.
My “uh” perfectly intersects with Jack’s definitive “yes.” I glare at him, and he gives me a small smile, just a tiny flex of the lips. I swing my eyes back to my mother.
“Is this the one you said you were with? The—”
“Why are we talking about him when we’re supposed to be talking about you? Did you put Monica up to it? Texting me? You look fine.”
She smooths her hand over her napkin. “Of course not. I— Well, I went to the supermarket and saw all those tabloids about you, and I turned them all around to face the wall. And I hadn’t heard from you since you ran out of here, really, and you didn’t respond to my texts, and after seeing those articles I was just so worried about you.
Anyway, I started feeling awfully dizzy and faint, so I called Monica over and she said she’d take me to the hospital.
And I was on my way there, but then… Well, Monica asked me when I’d last eaten anything, and I realized I hadn’t eaten a thing all day, because the supermarket thing happened really very early, and after that, like I said, I was just so worried about you.
So instead of going to the hospital, we stopped over at the diner. I’m feeling much better now, actually.”
“You’re fine,” I say. I choke down the maelstrom of relief, outrage, and about a dozen other feelings I can’t even pinpoint in this moment. I press my hands to my temples, rubbing. “You had, what? A rumbly tummy? So because of your machinations—”
“Machinations? I just told you I was on my way to the hospital.”
“Because of you, I am down here at midnight, and I’ve dragged poor Jack along for the ride. Unbelievable.”
“Well, I thought you might come, but I honestly didn’t expect you until maybe tomorrow. You can’t blame me for that part. I always tell you nothing good happens after midnight. You shouldn’t have been driving at night in the first place.”
I stand, abruptly, and Jack follows suit. “I’m going to find a hotel—”
“No! You’ll sleep here! You can sleep with me and… And Jack can have your room.”
I grit my teeth and persevere, keeping my voice calm, not wanting to spark an argument. “I’m going to find a hotel room and then come back tomorrow.”
I turn on my heel and flee, ignoring my mom’s protests.
Only when I’m back in the warm leather embrace of Jack’s car and we’re backing out of the driveway do I feel like I can breathe.
Jack drives for a bit before finally asking, “You good?”
“Super.”
“Where are we going?”
“Turn down this street. There’s a stretch of hotels on this strip.” We drive for a while, circling, the no vacancy signs mocking me at every turn. I pull out my phone and finally find one that lists a last-minute deal for tonight.
The Sunset Cove Resort is one of the nicer places on the island.
We pull into the parking lot, and I trudge into the lobby, barely registering our chic beach surroundings.
At the front desk, I try and haggle a bit over price, but the tired night clerk won’t budge.
It’s more money than I’m used to spending on much of anything, but I pull out my credit card.
Jack approaches and throws down his before I can hand mine over. I protest.
“I insist,” he says, signing the receipt and taking my hand to pull me along. I’m too tired to argue.